Skip to content
CityLab
+ Green

Bangladesh Offers a Model for Climate Migration

New research points to ways migrant-friendly cities with low-cost housing and job opportunities are helping those fleeing the effects of climate change.

A street vendor carries a basket of onions while walking along the a rail track near the Kawran Bazar in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in December 2019.

A street vendor carries a basket of onions while walking along the a rail track near the Kawran Bazar in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in December 2019.

Photographer: Ismail Ferdous/Bloomberg

Bangladesh faces a worsening climate migration crisis as intensifying floods send waves of displaced residents from low lying coastal zones to Dhaka each year.

"We cannot absorb a potential 10 million climate refugees or climates that might occur over the next 10 to 20 years," Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, said recently in a recorded video.